It is about the holy grail, who gets there first, and who cheated and stole or
not. As you know the hard problem of consciousness is the holy grail of
philosophy. Of course everybody tries to get it. In Indiana Jones and the last
Crusade Harrison Ford has to overcome three major obstacles and traps to get
the holy grail.
The 1st obstacle of the hard problem is IMHO to understand elementary
emotions like pleasure and pain, for example as described here. This
is the biological and ethological part, why pain and pleasure feel the
way they do
https://github.com/JochenFromm/PhilosophyBook/blob/main/GeometryOfActi
onReadiness.pdf
<https://github.com/JochenFromm/PhilosophyBook/blob/main/GeometryOfAct
ionReadiness.pdf>
Then there is the 2nd obstacle how similar the species and their sensory organs are for the pair where we try
to achieve an understanding. As Lars Chittka writes in "The Mind of a Bee" all information goes
through the sensory organs and "in a sense, all experiences are subjective [...] organs never send an
obiective veridical reflection of the world to the brain, but always one that is filtered by the sensors that
have been acquired over evolutionary time to suit the needs of the particular animal." He writes
"Before we understand what is in the mind of any organism […] we first need to understand the gateways,
the sense organs, through which information from the outside world is filtered". The similarity of sense
organs sets a natural limit to the degree we can understand each other as species.
The 3rd obstacle is the cultural and personal part. The key to this
obstacle is IMHO path dependence - which leads us to cinemas that
narrow this gap. I have tried to describe the 2rd and 3rd obstacle
here, inspired by our discussions and the books in the references
https://jochenfromm.github.io/PhilosophyBook/TheEdgeOfThought.pdf?vers
ion=0.4.1
<https://jochenfromm.github.io/PhilosophyBook/TheEdgeOfThought.pdf?ver
sion=0.4.1>
We could try to turn this into 2 or 3 papers - if somebody is
interested. Personally I think the path I tried to sketch is the way
we could solve it, but I am not sure if there are more obstacles and
if we could get it published anywhere. Maybe a chance of 10% ? Perhaps
one of these would fit: PNAS, PLOS Complex Systems or Nature Human
Behaviour
-J.
On November 2, 2026 4:08:55 PM GMT+01:00, Prof David West
<[email protected]> wrote:
I seem to have missed some entries in this thread (mockery?? successor??),
but I want to make a very specific comment about Wittgenstein.
Reducing a theory to an aphorism almost always leads to misunderstanding.
Wittgenstein did not mean, IMHO, don't speak; he merely said it is pointless to
try to force fit something into a language that has been formally defined to
exclude expressions of that thing.
Or another way of thinking about it: if you define a language game with
strict, formal, rules, and want to make a play in that game that is contravenes
those rules you either have to cheat or not make the play.
If our language game is English, with the verb 'to be' at its core, there are all kinds of
things—keeping the context of psychology—"experiences" that are not, keeping with the
rules, expressible in that language without creating nonsense, paradox, or "non-truth."
A simple example" 'Nothing" is at least a concept, that, in English is necessarily a
paradox because simply expressing the word makes it "Something."
Wittgenstein never said, "shut up."
davew
On Sun, Nov 1, 2026, at 7:25 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Eric,
I am still a bit speechless about this reply. My impression is that
behind the mockery there seems to be a feeling of outrage that someone
else may try to cut the line in which you and others have been waiting
patiently (to become Nick's successor as a psychology professor at an
university) by unfair means of cheating and stealing. This was and is
not my intention.
My idea of solving is the hard problem is probably different than
yours.
For me the hard problem can be solved by path dependence and the
cinemas
I mentioned earlier. There remains an irreducible, biological residue.
This article which I wrote in the last days with the help of our new AI
friends should help to understand it (I like the saddle node
bifurcations in section 3.2). We could try to publish it together if it
looks interesting to you or you could you reuse some of the ideas and
write your own paper. Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
solves hard problem. How does this sound? Maybe it would help you to
get
that academic position too.
https://github.com/JochenFromm/PhilosophyBook/blob/main/GeometryOfActi
onReadiness.pdf
<https://github.com/JochenFromm/PhilosophyBook/blob/main/GeometryOfAct
ionReadiness.pdf>
Best wishes,
Jochen
On 2026-10-04 16:40, Eric Charles wrote:
As some of you know, I recently finished a draft of The Book (the
one
I have been writing for around 15 years now, with a foundation in
Nick's writing, but extended beyond that). I have circulated
drafts to
some readers... so if any of you are interested....
This appears in the epilogue and speaks directly to the question
here:
Wittgenstein laid down a gauntlet to 21st century philosophers,
“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen,”
which is often translated to, “About what one can not speak, one
must remain silent.” This has been broadly taken to indicate that
we
should shut the heck up about a wide range of topics regarding the
mind, under the assumption that _all_ such talk is a prime example
of
that-about-which-we-cannot-speak. _If_ mind-body dualism is true,
either in its classical form or its modern neural form, then your
“feeling of anger” or “experience of blue” is something that
exists only in your mental space, that only you could access, and
my
“feeling of anger” or “experience of blue” is something that
exists only in my mental space, that only I could access. And _if_
that is how minds work, then we can try to talk about such things
all
we want, but ultimately it is _impossible_ for us to talk about
them
sensibly. Wittgenstein’s various thought experiments demonstrated
this repeatedly. Understood in this fashion — understood in
combination with a _separate_ commitment to dualism — many people
have understood Wittgenstein to be one more philosopher offering
proof
that a science of psychology is impossible.
However, given [William] James’s influence on Wittgenstein, we do
not see his dictum as pointing to a fatal flaw. Instead, we
understand
his dictum as pointing out a dilemma faced by the field of
psychology:
Those interested in psychology must _decide_ whether the phenomena
they are discussing are, inherently, an example of
that-of-which-we-_cannot_-speak, or if the phenomena they are
discussing might very well be the types of thing we _can_ speak
about
sensibly.
We assume, if you got this far, that you are the type of person
deeply
interested in psychological happenings. If, after all the
scrutinizing
you can muster, you believe you are interested in something that
cannot be talked about sensibly, then you should find a way to deal
with the inevitable sadness and disappointment of that situation,
and
then you should try to find other things to be interested in. We,
however, prefer the other option. We believe psychological
phenomena
are the types of things that _can_ be talked about sensibly, and we
have endeavored to show that such a position can work, in
practice. We
believe there is nothing within our attempt to understand
psychological terms that is fundamentally different than
Lavoisier’s
attempt to understand the elements. Like Lavoisier, we may be
right or
wrong about particular details, but only in the types of ways that
can
be readily corrected over time… because the things we are talking
about can be investigated readily, with no magic or vital essence,
or
other mystical factors having been included.
We believe that psychological phenomena are the types of things
that
_can_ evolve, that _can_ develop, and that _can_ be studied. They
are
aspects of behavioral design. And that design deserves to be
recognized and accounted for, to be both described accurately and
explained well.
Best,
Eric
On Sun, Oct 4, 2026 at 4:40 AM <[email protected]> wrote:
If this is a polite way to say shut up then please ignore the
rest.
What Wittgenstein wants to say by "whereof one cannot speak,
thereof
one must remain silent" is apparently that things like anxiety,
pain, nothingness, religion, the meaning of life, subjective
experience or feelings lie outside the logical world and
cannot be
meaningfully described in words. That is one way to see it. I
see it
differently. The problem is if we remain silent we will never
understand it. I prefer Karl Popper's optimistic view to the
depressive pessimism of Wittgenstein. Popper argued that
substantial, real-world problems exist in philosophy, not just
linguistic puzzles as Wittgenstein claims.
For me the things we cannot describe meaningful (yet) are the
interesting ones. We just need to find the right languages,
theories, perspectives or metaphors. One useful metaphor for
pain is
as you said "an emergency organization of behavior in which the
agent deploys physical and social defenses of various sorts".
If we
describe pain as a mechanism to protect a person it is
personal by
definition. And yet we all can understand what it is like to
feel
pain in general. If we watch the movie "Marley & Me" for
instance we
can understand what it is like to lose a loved dog because
most of
us have experienced such a loss of a cat or dog or hamster or
horse
ourselves ( by the way we have a new horse now named Mack which
looks like this https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VDyNyTsMccg
<https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VDyNyTsMccg> ).
This is in my opinion the solution to the hard problem: the
film
maker turns a 1st-person view in a 3rd-person view, the cinema
conveys the 3rd-person view to the persons in the audience,
and they
are able to understand roughly what-it-is-like-to-be the lead
actor
because they see and hear what it goes through and they know
what it
feels like to experience pain, loss, and suffering. According
to
Wittgenstein cinemas should not be allowed to exist ("one must
remain silent"). But people like them because they want to know
what-it-is-like-to-be someone else. Cinemas help to solve the
hard
problem.
-J.
On 2026-10-04 03:35, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
You can say that. But you end by reasserting the privacy
of pain.
And
…
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man
schweigen
You just cannot have it both ways.
N
Sent from my Dumb Phone
On Oct 3, 2026, at 2:26 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Claude was not happy about the theorem proofs
that Gemini
created.
And Jon also mentioned that they are not
waterproof. So I asked
Claude
and Gemini if they could write a new proof. They
could. I asked
them
if we could use gauge theory to explain subjective
experience -
gauge
invariance to describe objectivity, and symmetry breaking
for
subjectivity. Both Claude and Gemini said yes, and
Claude was able
to
formulate a proof that both could agree on
(combining two AIs
which
have different personalities often gives better results
than just
using one). Gemini is curious and creative, Claude is
accurate and
precise. The result was a proof for a theorem of a
new "field
theory
of understanding". I understand only half of the
mathematics, but
the
physicist who use gauge theory for quantum field theories
also
understand only half of it.
I have uploaded the new proofs here. The theorems
are named the
same,
only the proofs are different. If they are more
convincing than
the
old ones, then the idea is to replace the proofs
in the appendix
with
this version. In my opinion the solution to the hard
problem looks
similar to this - in combination with the other
things written in
the
rest of the book.
https://jochenfromm.github.io/PhilosophyBook/QualiaTheorems.pdf
<https://jochenfromm.github.io/PhilosophyBook/QualiaTheorems.pdf>
Paradoxically the qualia part that is most mysterious for
some
researchers is not a problem for others at all.
Nick for example
wrote
he does not believe in qualia and sees emotions as
regulations. In
a
post he argued "To me, pain is an emergency organization
of my
behavior in which I deploy physical and social defenses of
various
sorts.... To me, the question, “What is it like to be X?”,
has
been fully answered when you have said where X-like people
can be
found and what they will be doing there... for me,
feeling is a
kind
of doing, an exploring of the world". I would
agree to most of it
but
for me what an animal is doing alone gives us only a hint
what it
feels. If a horse for example is injured and feels
pain, it does
not
scream or cry, and you see no tears. Only if you
know the animal
well
you realize that the behavior is slightly
different, for example
by
the things it is not doing. I am certain animals feel pain
just as
intense as we do, but it is hard to recognize from th
eir behavior alone. If it would be better visible,
would we still
eat
pigs and cows in large amounts (this reminds me of
"Why We Love
Dogs,
Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows" from Melanie Joy)?
-J.
